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Friday, October 31, 2014

The Fourth Kind

There may be limitless variation on life among thesextillionor soplanets, but we're limited by our human schema when
envisioning what it might look like. We necessarily conceive of the greater
sentient universe in terms of earthly society, as that's our only reference
point.

Films, writings, and interviews on the extraterrestrial more
often involve encounters with predatory monsters because those vicious aliens
are a projected fear that foreign life forms resemble humanity at its worst.
It's easiest to imagine astronauts being shot down and vivisected in an
outer-space operating chamber since that's just what our institutions would do
if the ship were on the other shore.

In here and out there, wepose the most consistent threat to
ourselves.